Words with Friends with Benefits

Jasmine's smile was wider than his teasing warranted. "A girl likes what a girl likes."

"Take off your shirt."

"Do it for me." Her eyes had a challenging expression.

"No. I want to watch you take it off."

Her legs tightened around his waist as she pulled herself up to straddle his hips, bringing her face inches from his.

Max kept his eyes locked on hers as she unbuttoned her blouse. He remembered falling in love with those eyes across a petri dish in college Biology. He had wanted to dive into those blue pools of exuberance and wit.

Even now, having long recovered from the puppy love he felt in college, her eyes still fascinated him. He would count the gold and black flecks, and try to determine whether it was her clothes or her mood that made her eyes radiate with mischief and joy. Her eyes still shone with those twin lights, but there was something he hadn't seen before — a yearning ache — something he had once longed to see.

Or was he just imagining it, like he had so often hallucinated her interest in him back in college?

Jasmine halted her hands at the midpoint of her blouse. "You aren't watching."

Max kept his eyes on hers, and let a smile appear on his face. "I beg to differ."

Jasmine blinked and she glanced down at her shirt. She tried to undo another button, but her hands trembled with the same fluster he had seen on her face just before she looked away.

He had rattled her.

What had he done? Had she revealed something she didn't want him to see? He had been looking into her eyes rather than at her chest, focusing on the emotional intimacy of their contact over the physical. Why would that bother her unless...?

He recalled his sense of earlier disappointment at Jasmine's impulsivity, but what if he had been wrong, and this wasn't a whim, but a plan?

Max knew he might be suffering a relapse of his college-era projections of his own feelings onto Jasmine, but he wasn't imagining the warmth of her skin inches from his flesh, or the earlier taste of her kiss. What if their positions had reversed, and it was now Jasmine craving the emotional connection, fearful that he would deny her?

No, that way madness lies.

Max touched Jasmine's neck, stroking her skin while parting the fabric of her blouse.

Jasmine seemed to draw strength from the power in his hands, leaning into his caresses while her fingers undid the last buttons. She shrugged off the blouse.

Max drifted his hands down to touch the black satin which still imprisoned the soft white flesh of her breasts.

Jasmine sighed at the intimate touch, parting her legs to press her hips down further against the steel she could feel between his legs. She returned her gaze to his once more. "I like your hands," she said.

"I like where I am placing them. Did you wear this bra special for tonight?" Did you plan this?

"If I ever dig into my sexy stuff, you will know." The hesitation was back in her eyes. Max had caught enough glimpses of her undergarments over the years to know this wasn't the type of thing she wore casually. She was lying.

He pushed the straps off her shoulders and kissed the soft ivory flesh.

Jasmine swanned her neck and emitted a moan as her hips shifted against his.

Max undid her bra. He knew from her stories that Jasmine's breasts were the gateway to her libido, but that she was very particular about what she liked. She complained that most men screwed it up, and that she would just push their hands or mouth away and do the work herself with her own fingers. He remembered she liked it soft during foreplay, with more vigor as she approached climax.

He held her breasts gently in his his fingers, and gave her nipples the slow tongue baths he knew she loved. Jasmine responded by cupping her own breast upward into his searching mouth and sliding her other hand down to free him from his khakis.

Jasmine's voice was a sigh. "You know how to use your mouth for more than just talking."

Max acknowledged the compliment by swirling a nipple with his tongue, savoring the firm texture and restraining the urge to bite harder than he knew she presently wanted.

Jasmine nibbled his neck and whispered, "I am taking your pants off, then I would like to use my mouth on you."

Max felt his pants sliding down his legs, and the delicate touch of Jasmine's fingers began stroking him through the cotton of his boxers.

"Would you like that?" she asked. "Would you like me to take you in my mouth?"

Max spoke between nuzzles. "You are too smart to ask foolish questions."

"Ah, I thought you might be up for that. You have been hard for me tonight, haven't you? I could feel it under my legs during the movie. Would you think less of me if I confess I imagined what you would taste like in my mouth?"

Max indicated he would not think less of her at all. He glimpsed a sly smile as her face slid past his.

Jaz efficiently removed his boxers and knelt between his legs, her hands stroking his thighs and their juncture. She seemed to be assessing him. With a crooked smile and a glint in her eyes, her lips wrapped around him.

Max released a gasp of pleasure at the wet warmth of her glossal caresses. He recalled that Jaz had once voiced doubt in her own abilities as a fellatrix. Hadn't she been prompting him for tips? He remembered questioning whether she could stop talking long enough to perform the act, and inwardly laughed at the memory.

"God, you are so hard," she said, taking him out of her mouth, and speaking between kisses. "I just want to kiss and lick every inch."

Max grunted his permission.

"I love that my hands and mouth can do this to you — that I can get you so hard." She continued to taste him between words.

She really was going to talk the entire way through. Max tried to suppress the chuckle, but couldn't.

"Let me guess," she said, "you are remembering telling me that I wouldn't be able to shut up during oral?"

"Yeah, but now I know I like it."

Jasmine looked up at him, and saw the truth of his words. Max had once confessed his love of sex talk to her, and she displayed a smug grin of vindication. "Oh? You like it when a talkative woman goes down on you, and can't stop telling you how much she wants your cock? That when she tastes you in her mouth she can't help thinking that if you feel half as good inside her, that it will be the fuck of a lifetime?"

The hunger in her eyes was turning ravenous, and her mouth resumed its artistry. "Do it, Max. Come in my mouth. We will still have sex later."

Max had been holding back, and now surrendered himself. He let her words and mouth wash over him.

"That's it. I can feel you pulsing underneath my tongue. I want to taste you."

He uttered a warning and her lips wrapped tight around him. Max heard and felt Jaz's own moans reverberating from her throat as the world turned incandescent.

Jasmine smiled as she released him.

"Jaz, you can talk all you want during oral sex, and I will never mock you for it again."

"You know just what a girl wants to hear."

"Your turn."

Her smile broadened. "You really know just what a girl wants to hear. Bedroom then. I don't think you will be as careful as I was in not sliming my sofa, and I don't want you to try."

He grabbed his pants, and she took him by the hand and led him to her bedroom. A few selections from Matisse's Jazz hung over the bed: Icarus, Clown, and a print Max didn't recognize that seemed to show a blue human torso.

Her dresser had a dozen photographs, half of which included him. There was a photo she had taken of the day she had helped him move into their apartment. Another two from college, and more recent ones from some of their gaming nights and pub crawls.

When he turned back toward Jasmine, her pants were off, and she was lying on her back on top of her white comforter, watching him with a smile. "You've never been in here, have you?"

"No." Max had only glimpsed it before. "This will be my first time in either of your inner sanctums". He sat down next to her on the bed, and placed a hand on her thigh, which rose toward his touch. She was wearing black satin bikini panties, matching the bra that had been discarded in the living room.

"So you just naturally dress this sexy?" Max asked. He ran his fingers along the waistband of her panties, trying to decide whether he would be able to sense the tactile difference between the satin fabric and her skin if not for the heat coming off her flesh.

"Yes, I already told you." She had that nervous look in her eyes again, indicating a lie.

What did it mean? Had she planned this entire evening as an unconventional seduction, including a movie that she knew would get him aroused? But hadn't he chosen the movie?

No, he realized. He had picked one of three that she had suggested. Had they all had a similarly erotic scene?

This wasn't like Jaz. She was spontaneous, as prone to improvisation as her name would indicate. So what did it mean if she had planned a night like this? If she wanted to sleep with him, why didn't she just say so? Had she been as concerned about the impact on their friendship as he was?

Jasmine laughed nervously, disconcerted by his hesitation. "What are you thinking?"

"I have imagined you naked for almost ten years, and you exceed expectations." It wasn't the answer to her question, but it was true nonetheless — creamy skin over toned sinews, long legs, a narrow waist, and full breasts that his mouth longed to savor again. His imaginings hadn't done her justice.

"I am not naked, you goof." She wriggled her hips as a reminder of the unwelcome presence of her panties.

"That's right. I had said I was going to return the favor. I had forgotten."

"I hadn't!" Jaz arched her hips as Max removed her panties. He began his kisses at her navel, and he felt her hands lightly grip his hair as he travelled south.

Jasmine emitted a stuttered squeak that deepened into a low growl of pleasure as Max tasted her. She raked her fingers through his hair, and Max could feel her toes slowly curve upward against the skin of his hips.

"Woof," she woofed. "You were listening during all my... post-mortems about... (oh fuck)... oral, weren't you?"

Max allowed his mouth to speak for him — nonverbally. He remembered her describing how her wetness and hip movements indicated where and how she desired to be touched. It helped that she was so ready and open for him, rendering it unnecessary to time the transition from slow to fast. The squirms of her body and the squeals of her throat told him it was time to use his hands. One set of fingers slipped inside her, and the other reached across the flat, sweat-sheened expanse of her stomach to pinch a nipple with the ferocity that he knew she wanted.

Jasmine was already perched on the cusp of climax as Max pushed her most precious and sensitive buttons. She swore again, and bit down on the flesh of her own palm, trying simultaneously and paradoxically to forestall and prolong the inevitable climactic cry.

Her failure was glorious.

Max intensified the staccato rhythms of his manipulations, inducing a second wave of rapture, then eased off as Jasmine physically withdrew into a euphoric, quivering puddle.

She muttered something as Max laid down beside her.

"You are mumbling," he said.

Jasmine threw a leg across him, and rested her head on his shoulder while she twirled spirals into his chest hair. "I said that was nice."

No, she had said something like "passed", but he didn't argue the point, preferring to inhale the scent of her auburn mane. "I have heard you talk about how you throw yourself into sex, but I never hoped to see it." He had loved the way her body had responded to his touch, her own ecstasy enhancing his own.

Her fingers traced a line down between his legs, exploring and testing. He felt her smile broaden against his chest. "Feels like you are ready to see it again," she said, climbing on top of him.

Max's eyes rolled back in his head as he felt the hot, slick contact between them. Jasmine's hips moved against him with a rhythm and force of wanton demand.

Her lips nuzzled his neck as she spoke. "This isn't too weird for you?"

"That isn't the word I would choose." His hands explored her body, committing each svelte curve to memory for eternal recall.

"What word would you choose?" Her voice was a tropical wind in his ear.

"There isn't a word for something that is familiar and exotic at the same time."

He heard light laughter between her kisses. "Yeah, I know." her hips had brought him to the position and angle she wanted, and with one transcendent glide, he was inside her.

Jasmine sighed as her teeth scraped against his collarbone. "God, to think I was worried..."

"Worried about what?"

She shook her head. "Not now."

He thought he knew, and it all made sense in a flash. "I know what you are up to."

Jasmine's hips briefly hesitated, before continuing their divine rhythms. "I am fucking you, that is what I am up to."

She was using obscenity to distract him. Should he let her? If he was wrong...

But what if I am right? he thought.

"The guy you wanted to seduce, but were afraid of complications — it's me. You have been planning this for months," he said, going for broke.

She sat up, straddling him. With her hair an unkempt, half-closed auburn curtain over her face, he could only see part of what seemed to be a wary expression. "You have quite the ego," she said.

"Which you like." He repositioned her leg, then unleashed his muscles to roll on top of her, pinning her against her bed with a thrust of his hips.

She had looked as if she were about to speak, but suddenly had no words. The brief widening of her eyes and a tightening inside her loins spoke for her.

"This isn't about sleeping with me," Max said.

"I beg to differ," she managed to stutter.

"This isn't just about sleeping with me."

"Oh?" she asked, her body opening to draw him deeper inside her.

"Sex is so important to you that you didn't want to risk our friendship by telling me the truth until you knew whether the sex would be good."

Max watched perspiration bead on Jasmine's upper lip, as her hips arched in a rhythmic match to his. "I wouldn't tell you what truth?"

He ignored her question. "And you wanted to see if I would take a chance, so you planned this whole night as a test drive, concocting an excuse about wanting a fuckbuddy. You don't want to tell me the truth until you are sure this is what you want. And now you know it is."

"Tell you what truth?" she repeated, her breath catching in anticipation.

"That you have fallen in love with me."

Jasmine's eyes widened as Max's words struck true. Her fingers clambered for purchase on his back, and her legs pulled him close.

"And now," Max said, "you are trying to guess what I am going to do about it."

Her eyes bored into his, seeking the answer to that very question.

Max was heady with triumph. He was right. The trembling of her body, the increased tempo of her hips, and the torrid look in her eyes all screamed the truth.

How must she be feeling now — poised on the precipice between friendship and love — forced to choose — knowing he was forced to choose as well? Was she vulnerable? scared?

Vulnerable, maybe, but not scared. This was Jasmine. She feared nothing but global warming and spiders. The expression in her face was not fear, but hope.

Max's suspicions of her plans had grown as the evening had progressed. He had thought through his response as each touch of her flesh weakened the walls of rationalization he had built to withstand the force of ten years worth of suppressed emotion. Jasmine's "recklessness" was now revealed as a patient refocusing of her attention upon Max himself. They wouldn't be right for each other? That may have once been true, when he was an insecure geek and she an intellectual party girl, but it wasn't true today. That wasn't who they were any more, and that evolution had been driven by their friendship.

Each made the other better, and if that wasn't right, then nothing was.

He held her face in his hands, sure of his own choice. He had planned to tease her, but faced with the childlike vulnerability in her face, he spoke. "I have loved you since the first day in biology lab, when you made a heated crucible explode by dunking it in ice water. I just suppressed it by convincing myself it wouldn't ever happen.

"I was a fool ten years ago to think I had a chance at you. I was a fool one year ago to think I didn't. And I would be a fool now to take the most beautiful, amazing, and inspiring woman I have ever known — to take my best friend in the world — and relegate her to the mere status of a 'friend with benefits'. I am done being a fool. I won't settle for that. It's beneath what we mean to each other. If I am going to have you — and I will have you — it will be the whole Jasmine. I want your body, heart, and soul." His body moved in a crescendo that paced his emotions.

The strength of Jasmine's smile was a caress against his hands as he held her face. Her eyes were blue sunlight.

Jasmine's fingers twined through his hair, and she pulled him down to speak in his ear, her voice a sigh.

"You are right. I did plan this, because I had to know how we would be together, and now that I have had you I don't want anyone else to touch me ever again." Jasmine's legs were a vice, pulling him into the depths of her body. "I do love you, and have been working for months to make you mine. But this has been my longest sexual drought since I was sixteen." He could hear laughter in her words as they turned insistent. "Make me come or I am kicking you out on the street."

Max increased the urgency of his thrusts, rising to the challenge. His hand slid down to find the magic between her legs, and his other hand seized her breast with the rough strength he knew she craved right now. He gazed deep into the eyes of his best friend and lover as she experienced an apotheosis of love, friendship, and lust — knowing she was watching the same detonation of pleasure mirrored in his own eyes.

---

Jasmine lay facedown on top of him, head on his chest, her broad smile showing white teeth.

Max traced a finger up the length of her spine, exulting in the reality of having her in his arms. "Sorry to wreck your anti-Valentine's day with a burst of romance."

Jasmine raised her head, and he saw mischief in her eyes again. "Well, Anti-Valentine's Day started out as a great idea, but then it got all commercialized, you know?"

Max smiled. "Yeah, it's like there is all this pressure to conform to society's expectations of what an unromantic evening is supposed to be like. If I want to have a romantic evening, I will have one on my terms, and Hallmark can take all of it's Anti-Valentine's Day cards and go fuck itself."

She nodded. "Agreed. It's time we created Anti-Anti-Valentine's Day, to reclaim it for the romantics."

Max ran his fingers through her hair as she sat up. "I need to use the bathroom before round three," she said.

He watched the sway of her hips as she walked down the hall.

Two minutes later, he heard his phone buzz from the pocket of his pants.

She had made a move from the bathroom, using a blank tile and an earlier three-letter play to make her word, which also formed the word OX by snuggling up against an open X on the left hand side of the board.

Jazmatazz has played WOOHOO for 19 points.

Despite her earlier haphazard play that Max now saw as a string of hints as to her intentions today, Jasmine was now beating him by fifty-three points, and she had just drawn down the number of remaining tiles to zero. If Max were going to win, it would be with the tiles he now possessed: YICOVRT